- Authorities are still trying to establish what caused a major power blackout in Spain and Portugal yesterday morning which start at around 12:30am local time.
- Supply is currently being systematically restored but not after both countries came to a standstill.
Officials said the reasons for the blackout were unclear, with Portugal’s Prime Minister Luis Montenegro saying there was “no indication” a cyberattack was the cause.
“We do not yet have conclusive information on the reasons for this (power) cut,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a national address, adding that there had been no signs of any security issues.
“It is possible the blackout had been caused by a very large oscillation in electrical voltage, first in the Spanish system, which then spread to the Portuguese system”, said Joao Conceicao, director at Portuguese electricity distributor REN.
In comments to Euronews, Taco Engelaar, managing director at energy infrastructure experts Neara, posited that the interconnectivity of the national grids and their systems would mean a fault or attack would have the same net result.
“Such a widespread grid failure is extremely unusual and could be caused by a number of things: there could be a physical fault in the grid which brings down power, a coordinated cyberattack could be behind it, or a dramatic imbalance between demand and supply has tipped the grid system over the edge,” he said.
“If it’s a system fault, then the interconnectivity between different regional and national grids could be leading to the large footprint of outages we’re seeing today [Monday],” he added.
“The same goes for a cyberattack – lots of these systems are connected and share assets – taking down one could take down many”.
Why do grids fail? Watch the video HERE
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
